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Dirt Talk by BuildWitt
Australian Adventure Week Two and Dirt World 2026 (BuildWitt Update #21) – DT 379
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Foreign. Hello, everybody. Welcome back. Bill with update. This is number 21 titled Australian Adventure Week 2 and Dirt World 2026. This is for those of you that haven't watched so far. Listen. This is a weekly update of what the heck happens here at Build With. A lot of people ask, what is Build With? What do you do? Is it just you running around with a camera? Well, that's part of it, but there is a whole business behind the scenes with a brilliant team making it happen to make the dirt world a better place. Build the dirt World's next generation. And these updates, they're weekly via email primarily, but also podcast. As you know. As you're listening to this, these weekly updates hopefully give you a bit more context as to what's going on behind the scenes, good, bad or indifferent. So first up, going to our second week of Australia, I got horribly seasick on the Great Barrier Reef, which I think is a new core memory. I have wanted to swim on the Great Barrier Reef in the Great Barrier Reef since childhood. That's another love of mine, Dirt. The first love, aquariums, fish, marine life, coral reef, etc. Is certainly the second love. Great Barrier Reef, that is like the place to go see fishes and corals. So when I was planning this trip, we were going to be in Weipa, and then after Wepa, which is very northern part of Queensland, we would be going down to Mackay, which means we would be going right by the Great Barrier Reef. And I thought, well, might as well spend the weekend in Cairns to then go snorkeling on the Barrier Reef. So we found a great, a great tour. We went snorkeling. The only problem was that the conditions were not ideal. The water was a bit rough and me, I get terribly motion sick. I thought I would be fine, but it was really rough. So going out there, it's about our boat ride to get out to the reef. It's not along the coast. It's a little. It's a little outside of the actual coast. While going out there started to get a little. We got out there, I was like, well, I'm gonna be fine. Once I'm in the water. I hit the water. The problem is the water's moving as well. Not just the boat, but the water. So not only was I seasick on the boat, but I was seasick within the sea. I did see one turtle. I did see some fish. Couldn't really focus on them. But after that, decided I can't do this anymore. Got back on the boat. The problem is the boat's still moving at this point. I tried to take something for the sickness, didn't work. So spent the next few hours just basically, basically vomiting over the side of the boat which was really good, really good. So that's a little bit of the fun stuff we get to do while traveling. But now for the real fun stuff. Back to Business Australia Week 2 was super legit. After a not so relaxing day off in Cairns, we drove south to Mackay. About nine hour drive and Mackay is home base to the infamous Bowen basin, one of the leading metallurgical coal regions anywhere on planet Earth. This is a spectacular area. One of my favorite places in the world. I would say Mackay is quite interesting. It's a, it's a good sized town. It's not huge, but it's pretty fair size. And on the outskirts of the town is everything mining. So, so you have Caterpillar, Liebherr, Komatsu, Hitachi, you know, every big brand, the tire manufacturers, truck bodies going together, contractors like Teese. It is the home base because you have the port right there. So you can bring in materials, equipment, et cetera to these big workshops. You can assemble things at these workshops. And then the mines are, you know the mines that are closest are about hour, hour and a half outside of town and they extend for a few hours out of town. And just the scale and scope of this region is unbelievable. They're all mining one seam. It's metallurgical coal. So it's for steel making. It's a key ingredient in steel carbon and it heats up traditional integrated blast furnaces. So really big deal. Our first stop here was a move of the world's largest mechanical drive loader which is the Komatsu WA 1200. From Komatsu, Australia's Mackay shop to BMA's Caval Ridge mine which is about 180km, just over 100 miles. We were specifically with heavy haul experts at Centurion and they made the job as easy as possible. So Komatsu, they manufacture such a loader up in Japan. They put it on a boat, they send it down to the port of Makai, it arrives in pieces for the sake of shipping. Then the crews at Komatsu, they not only build the loader but they also modify it to fit not just Australian mine specifications, but the customer specifications. And in this case the customer bma, they were completely on board with having us out, which was spectacular. Usually you can't talk about the customer, but bma, they gave us permission and not only permission to talk about them, but to go on site. So they build the loader at the shop to the exact specifications. They take the wheels off, they don't put the front lifting arm or bucket on. They take the cab off for height and then Centurion shows up and they slide a spectacular trailer underneath. They chain it all down. And then the next day at about 3 or 4am they take off with the police escort out of town. They go up the hill, they have a pull truck that helps the truck get all the way up the hill with the load. And then from there the pull truck detaches and everything goes to the mine. Once we got to the mine, we saw them. It's the same process put in reverse to unload the machine. They put it on four different giant specially made jacks specifically for the machine. They slide the trailer out and then Komatsu crews alongside BMA build the machine over about a week. There's a little less to do once it's on site because it's almost all built at this point. Put the tires on, put the lifting arms on, bucket cab, a few extra things, test it and then it's off to work. And as I'm recording this, the machine is working, which is pretty, pretty neat. We'll have the whole video on the process. So thank you to Centurion again. Hastings, Deering. They gave us a great tour while we were in Mackay. Komatsu, Australia, bma. It was, it was really cool to have such brilliant access. This is our third trip out there and the access has never been better. If you're looking for another industry event that is a snooze fest, this is definitely not for you. But if you're a leader looking to elevate yourself, your team, looking for like minded individuals that are hungry, then look no further than the Ariat Dirt World Summit November 5th through the 7th in Dallas, Texas. In our third year, we'll have about 1500 hungry industry leaders from about 500 companies looking to learn, grow, teach. It's going to be fantastic. We also have a world class lineup. We've got Jesse Cole from the Savannah Bananas, James Clear, Atomic Habits, Kim Scott, Radical Candor, Mark Miller, Chick Fil A leadership Tim Grover who is Michael Jordan's trainer. You will not hear from a lineup like this anywhere else so check out details now. Dirtworld.com you can use code AARON10 for 10% off any registrations and we'll see you November 5th through the 7th in Dallas, Texas. Then from there we went to one of my favorite favorite mining operations of all time, which Is the Pembroke all of Downs complex. And Pembroke CEO Barry, he spent the whole day with us, which was just brilliant. I love spending time with Barry. It's the third time I've seen him out on site and it's the third time we've been to all of Downs. The first time we went there, there was no mining happening because it's a greenfield steel making coal operation. The second time they had just delivered the first coal a month prior of us getting there. And then this time they had already started on the reclamation efforts on the pit, the part of the pit we had seen before. And they were advancing the pit, producing coal. It was spectacular. So that was really something else. Great day. And then finally we traveled further south to Canberra where we linked up with the fine folks at Forest Track. So we got, we visited them once before we got back in their helicopter in Canberra. We spent about 45 minutes flying into the Snowy mountains and then we checked out some of their job sites. What they are doing is they are resetting the forest. So a lot of this area, since it's, it's higher elevation, it's the highest elevation in Australia, it grows pine. So it's pine plantations for lumber, paper products, et cetera. Really vital stuff. And it's a renewable resource. Go figure. However, the fires 2019, 2020 burned a lot of these plantations. So Forest Track has to come in, they have to clean up all the burned debris. They use chains, chain clearing, so a giant ship chain pulled by two D8s to knock trees over. They then use the same D8s with big rakes on the front to push everything into piles. The forestry department, whatever they're called, they'll come in, they'll burn those piles to remove the old debris. The old fuel Forest Track will then come through and rip everything in rows. And finally crews will come in by hand to replant sometimes 30, 40,000 trees a day. You let it all sit for 20, 25 years and there you go, you have a forest, fully mature pine ready for harvesting. Once harvested, you start the process over again and again and again. So it was a really cool visit. It was just an amazing week. I could not be a bigger fan of Australia and I'm really grateful to have these opportunities. So that's Australia Adventure Week 2. Back home, our team posted four developer positions hiring only those in Salt Lake City or Phoenix. And once these software developers are hired, we can make our software products even more better, faster and stronger. I've talked about some of the retooling we're Doing as a software company, we need more development horsepower and we are hiring these positions to accomplish that. We're focused on Salt Lake City or Phoenix because that is where Darren, he's up in Salt Lake City, Randy is, he's in Phoenix. We want to be meeting more in person from a product standpoint. So hopefully we are recruiting those positions as I say this and hopefully I'll report soon that we have all the positions the folks we need from a product standpoint. All of our customers are now on the Build with improve platform, which means migration will be completed this month. I've talked at length about moving everybody from the old build with training platform to the new Build with improve platform. It's been a process that has taken many months as we had hundreds of customers to migrate. But that process is nearly complete. Everybody, new customers and existing customers are on the new platform and soon we will sunset the old product and focus every bit of our effort on improving Bill would improve to help those out in the field develop themselves not just as workers, but better people through all kinds of skills based training, leadership, safety, financial health, physical health. It's really good stuff. I watch a video every day, so does our team and I've learned a lot and hopefully we can help the industry learn a lot as well. Finally, we worked through our sales plan for the 2026 ARIAT Dirt World Summit. Ariat's also the sponsor for next year, which is awesome, which is quite simple and that is sell out the event in 2025. We don't want to be selling it anymore and we'll do this not just by wishing it, but through a world class experience at this year's summit, the best industry event this year, I believe that is the best way to sell. Next year's summit is delivering way more value than people are paying for this year and I'm confident we'll be doing that. We'll be offering a significant discount for those buying tickets this year for next year and maybe a giveaway that's pretty damn cool. It's not totally official yet, can't talk about it, but it will be quite the carrot. But yeah, the goal is, I've talked a lot about us focusing as a software company. The summit is key to building trust with the industry. It's part of our influence. So it's, it's building the brand, building trust, connecting with, with leadership in the industry at a different level. But if we're selling it all year, it also is a substantial distraction. So we're hoping to incentivize everybody to buy their tickets this year after the event. We are also reducing the size of the event next year. So we've been growing it steadily for three years. We're stopping that for next year and whoever gets their tickets, great. If you don't get your tickets, it is what it is because we want those that are hungry and on board and we have that group. We have a great group. So I am a huge proponent of not selling it. I've sold it for three years now alongside a lot of other people on the team. It's been necessary cause it's a new event but we've got three years of proof that the value is there. It's a completely different vent than anything else in the industry and it's only getting way better from here. So if we can divert our energy from selling it to building the software company and then to elevating the experience, you know, a lot of horsepower is going into sales. But if we can take that horsepower and put it towards making the dirt world summit area Dirt world summit better and better and better. Now we're making something really extraordinary that's a little bit about the summit. So that is the update Bill with update number 21. As always, give me a shout if you have questions. Want to talk about any of this? Need clarification? Want to hear something else in the future? And Aaron, Aaron at buildwit. B u I l d w I t t com. I would love to hear from you. And with that, we will see you on the next one. Everybody stay dirty.